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Fast and Easy Soiling Measurement: Lessons From 40,000 Images
Solar Unsoiled’s Novel Method for Soiling Assessment is Making Waves in the Industry
Solar Unsoiled provides its customers with handheld digital microscopes for quick and accurate on-site soiling assessment.
Soiling has a history of being mishandled in the industry. Asset managers, O&M providers, technicians, and performance engineers are faced with constant issues, and a complex issue like soiling mitigation often falls to the bottom of the to-do list. To make matters more difficult, existing methods of getting on-site soiling measurements are cumbersome and can be inefficient uses of technician resources. Soiling sensors struggle with maintenance, accuracy, reliability, and scalability. IV curve tracing and data analytics are time-intensive and can produce variable results depending on the current site conditions.
After years of research and development in optical microscope imagery, Solar Unsoiled developed a method to measure soiling in just a few minutes. This novel approach observes individual particles on the panel surface and is reliable under any weather or site conditions.
How Does It Work?
This patent-pending method employs a handheld microscope with a digital camera to image individual particles invisible to the naked eye. Images are processed with optical modelling to quantify soiling loss. This method has been validated against IV curve tracing to be within 1.3% soiling loss.
Solar Unsoiled's customers have used this method to capture more than 40,000 soiling images – and counting. Here are a few favorites:
Fungal growth on the surface traps pollen particles. Solar Unsoiled is partnered with NREL and Duke University to investigate the phenomena of ‘bio-soiling’.
Soiling is a highly localized issue, impacted by proximity to environmental pollutants. This site is located near a cement plant, and its panels are coated in a thick layer of cement dust.
This site is co-located with a wind farm. The panels on this site are filled with orange specs – oil deposits from turbine lubrication.
What Are The Requirements?
Only 25 images need to be taken (4-5 images from 3-4 panels), and this only needs to be done 2-4 times per year. This process takes minutes and can be done day or night, rain or shine.
These tools are provided to technicians and kept in company trucks so they can capture images while already on-site for other maintenance. The easiest way to get these scheduled is by including the microscope method in routine preventative maintenance checks.
What Does Technician Onboarding Look Like?
Training is done via a 15 minute youtube video. Uploading images collections is made easy with a no-login upload portal.
The Takeaway:
Across hundreds of solar farms, Solar Unsoiled has combined these images with operational data analytics to tune site-specific models that provide customers with fleet wide, optimized cleaning schedules. This microscopy method is a valuable input into a comprehensive solution, and a key driver in the effort to move the industry from reactive to proactive maintenance.